1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to contour extraction and, more particularly, radial contour extraction by splitting homogeneous areas.
2. Description of the Related Art
Critical markers of disease often depend on the sizes, shapes, and textures of nuclei. Conventionally, pathologists examine small fields of view of a biopsy sample at high (e.g, 400× objective) magnification to closely examine nuclei. However, recent advances in digital microscopy have made it possible to consider biopsy samples using digital micrographs, allowing these statistical measurements to be performed more accurately by using computerized image analysis software. To measure these characteristics of tissue structure, many nuclei in the biopsy sample must be segmented accurately.
Although nuclei should attract hematoxylin dye, nuclei boundaries may be unclear. It has been observed that many nuclei have weak or discontinuously strong edges. Typical contour extraction maximizes edge response at the boundary instead of homogeneity in the interior. However, when the edge responses are unreliable in this way, edge-based contour extractors tend to produce single aggregate detections from touching or nearby nuclei, with one contour enclosing both nuclei shapes.